Back Door Better Than the Alternative T Was Tricky Reading the Interview with Joe Harney in These Pages a Couple of Weeks Back
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HINTERLAND May 10 2012 SPORT 37 SEEING NIALL THINGS HOWARD’S WAY HOWARD Back door better than the alternative t was tricky reading the interview with Joe Harney in these pages a couple of weeks back. My eyes kept on being Idrawn back to the picture of a Waterford man holding a Celtic cross. Speaking to a customer a few years back, I noted on his order form that he was from Ballydurn and I confessed that I had no idea where it was and wouldn’t have heard of it but for Peter Queally – the former inter-county hurler, not the beef baron of the same name. “Joe Harney is from Ballydurn,” he replied, and no more needed to be said on the matter. By dint of that one thing, Ballydurn mattered. Eventually you manage to cut through the hero worship and read what he had to say, and his disappointment with the modern game came through, not least his comment about the back door system. According to Joe, “the back door system has resulted in too many meaningless games being played on the county scene”, and he’s probably right. It’s hard to love the back door. As Harney intimates, much of the lustre of the championship has been lost. My formative years following the hurling All-Ireland saw some truly memorable clashes between Cork and Tipperary, the latter resurgent after going nearly a decade without winning a single championship match. Each game was an epic and at the Déise Frustration: Waterford’s Eamonn Murphy is bottled up by Tipperary’s Noel McGrath and Kevin O’Gorman pictured during last year’s Munster GAA under-21 Hurling championship quarter-final end victory really meant something clash at Semple Stadium. PIC: MICHAEL KIELY because you knew the other team were not coming back. “Cork bet and the we had already beaten (Limerick Keane era, defined by his presence should be allowed to disguise that. in the semi-final. And history has hay saved” was the mantra used in in 2007). Both were hard to take, both as a player and as a mentor for It was into that reality that the back a way of glossing over the horror of Tipp to denote a satisfactory summer. and the attitude of Joe Harney is the team in the late 1950s, Waterford door was introduced. And far from winner-takes-all – notice how it isn’t Nowadays, even in those increasingly understandable when viewed in that stayed competitive to the point that damning the back door with faint called loser-takes-a-fall. Anyone who rare areas where saving the hay still context. eventually our number came up praise by saying the current format is a has forgotten what that is like should matters, you’d have to say, “Cork bet All other things are not equal in 1948 and 1959 and it must have marginal improvement on what went check out our loss to Tipperary in – unless the beggars come through though. Joe’s hurling upbringing seemed to that generation that it before, I believe that what we have is the Under-21 championship last year, the back door – and the hay saved.” It would have been in the shadow of would always be this way. as good as it is going to get. A century when 14-man Waterford slashed a doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. John Keane, a man who practically That wasn’t the way it worked of rivalry means that games within ten-point deficit to two points only to Closer to home, both in terms of single-handedly turned Waterford out, and for my generation the the provinces, even if they are not have a strong penalty claim denied in time and space, the Waterford Minor from whipping boys into contenders. championship was an annual routine winner-takes-all affairs, still matter. the last minute and see Tipp sweep hurlers will be glumly contemplating Up until his arrival on the scene of hoping you’d draw Kerry then try For all of the pessimism I introduced up the field and score another goal. the vagaries of the system in their Waterford were regularly on the sharp to keep the score down in the next to the discussion by highlighting It was incredibly frustrating, and this competition. Once the dust had end of some awful beatings – how’s round. Our games were even more Waterford’s potential fate in the was only Under-21 level. You may settled on a thrilling one-point Waterford 0-0 Limerick 10-3 in the meaningless than today’s phoney war Minor championship this year, at no find that invigorating in the same extra-time away win over Clare, the 1920 Munster championship for a games in Munster, and no amount stage in their game with Clare would way some people like jumping off the county who have beaten us in the scoreline? – and occasionally didn’t of memorable hammer-and-tongs either side have said yerra, let’s take Guillamene on Christmas Day. The last two Munster finals, they would even field a team. Throughout the clashes between Tipperary and Cork a dive and avoid meeting Tipperary rest of us are content taking a couple have looked at the next step – playing of dips in high summer and hold the Tipperary in Thurles – and wondered, masochism, thanks very much. “that’s meant to be our reward?” prefer the grind of safety battles, a spectacle For a sport to thrive, you need to Should Clare come through the other Snooker which could be so soul-destroying for the be able to aspire to something. How side of the draw and Waterford go player on the wrong end of it that Roman many people in Waterford picked up out to Tipp there will be some grim should get emperors would have considered it to be a hurley to emulate the feats of John satisfaction in the Banner county at unnecessarily cruel. Keane, the man who no less a giant our fate, having beaten Waterford back to balk In the fortnight that saw the retirement of of the game than Mick Mackey said in the 2009 first round only to lose Ali Carter’s ultimately Stephen Hendry, the greatest player to ever was the greatest hurler ever was or to us in the semi-final as Waterford futile plan to frustrate pick up a cue and as steely-eyed a champion will be? We may lack giants like that returned through the back door. Ronnie O’Sullivan in last as you are likely to find in any sport, it would in these more pedestrian times, so I’ll Although before Clare get too self- weekend’s snooker World be remiss not to dwell on Hendry’s defining settle for not having to scale Everest righteous about what went down Championship final by legacy: turning the sport into one for well- every time we take to the field. Better that year they’d do well to remember drawing him into a safety oiled potting machines and driving away the a few meaningless matches than the that, all other things being equal, battle at every turn moved Dennis Taylor to observe that spectator who revelled in the gladitorial tension of the prospect of no matches at all. we’ve been one of the biggest losers some people actually prefer the attrition of safety play to sport before his arrival on the scene. *For more about John Keane, check from the back door. It’s hard to know virtuoso break-building. Barry Hearn, tasked with reviving the sport, should out David Smith’s biography, ‘The which was worse – seeing a team we’d He didn’t seem convinced as he said it so let me give take note. Simon Cowell has cornered the market in Unconquerable Keane – John Keane already beaten win the All-Ireland Dennis the benefit of my, uh, wisdom. Some of us much humiliation TV. Time for snooker to wrestle it back. and the Rise of Waterford Hurling’. (Cork in 2004) or losing to a team .